


BAD DREAM HOTLINE

by cashopea



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Depression, Falling In Love, Hospitals, Implied / Referenced Car Crash, Kageyama hates cottage cheese and shouyou is his secondhand sunshine, M/M, Suicide Attempt, idk its dumb
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-18
Updated: 2015-10-20
Packaged: 2018-04-26 23:31:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5024938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cashopea/pseuds/cashopea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kageyama Tobio divides his life into two parts-- before and after.</p><p>He only remembers shattered, vague memories of the before. Like waking up and trying to recall bits and pieces of your dream. He remembers the store-bought dinners and turning the volume all the way up to tune out the silence, he remembers 5-hour baths and the cloud of mist that came from his mouth in the cold. Then there's the after.</p><p>(Or, the one where Kageyama is involved in a car crash and finds himself in the hospital, where he officially meets the literal human embodiment of sunshine.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

Kageyama Tobio divides his life into two parts-- before and after.

He only remembers shattered, vague memories of the before. Like waking up and trying to recall bits and pieces of your dream. He remembers the store-bought dinners and turning the volume all the way up to tune out the silence, he remembers 5-hour baths and the cloud of mist that came from his mouth in the cold. Then there's the after.

His fingers twitch against the clean sheets.

The nurse opens the door as quietly as she can, offering a polite greeting as she takes out a notepad and a pen.

"Any complaints?"

Tobio's tongue is numb. The smell of the one place he never thought he'd end up fills his lungs and winds its way around his body, messing with his head. Suffocates him, like a snake. He tells himself not to talk, wishing the ground to open up and swallow him whole.

It doesn't.

"My knuckles hurt," he rasps. Then he adds, as an afterthought, "And I can't feel my legs."

The nurse laughs lightly, and Kageyama stares in confusion. Then she hums, putting her notepad on the table beside his bed and leaning forward. She pokes at his feet and his knees, concentrating. He can see her touching but he can't feel it, so he frowns at her, wanting to kick her, but finding that he can't move his legs. At all. It sinks in, down into the pit of his stomach, and the panic sets in. He can't feel, can't move, and his throat closes up.

"What--," he chokes.

The nurse stops poking, sighs, looks at him. "This is completely normal after a crash that catastrophic. The Doctors keep saying you're lucky you're still alive, which you should be thankful for--"

" _Normal?_ ," Tobio echoes in disbelief. His voice is strained.

"Yes."

"There's-- This isn't _normal_ ," Kageyama snaps, gasping in air. It's starting again, and his body feels strange. The sheets turn to water and there's nowhere to put his feet, nothing solid to keep him safe, the water's deeper than he thought and his nose is just below the shoreline.

"Sir," the nurse attempts, reaching for his wrists.

He snatches his hands away and struggles to sit up, flinching away from the touch. His lungs shrink and there's no room to breathe. He doesn't know where he is.

Hospital.

"Sir, try to calm down," she half-shouts, trying to pin him down.

He can walk, his legs still work. Of course they do.

He pushes himself towards the edge of the hospital bed, glaring down at the tiled floor. He wasn't in any crash, he's not supposed to be here. His thoughts blur together and become a chant, and he grabs one leg and shoves it forward. His toes don't feel the coldness of the ground. He ignores the loss of feeling and bites out an insult and when she tries to grab him again, he hits her. He doesn't mean to, not now, but she whips back and he collapses.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

****  
_____________________________________________________ **  
**

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Day One," Tobio mutters.

He didn't get yelled at for slapping a nurse, like he thought he would, but he didn't get to apologize either. She didn't come back the next day, and it didn't take the new nurse to tell him that she chose not to. He felt anger over guilt.

A pack of ice sat frozen above his left hand, but his fingers still ached. The new nurse stood across the room, supervising, another one of those stupid notepads in her hand. The device in his own, right hand, was what she'd given him. A voice recorder. It was like a small calculator, with a small screen and a lot of silver buttons-- she'd shown him which ones were 'record' and 'stop'. He didn't know what to do with it.

He stops the tape, starts again.

"Day One," he repeats.

The nurse nods, smiles.

He doesn't want to talk about hitting the other one, but his subconscious does.

"The doctors say I'm lucky to be alive," he repeats her words. "I don't think they're right."

The nurse's smile doesn't falter. Her eyes look like a cat's.

"I can't feel my legs. I tried to walk two days ago and I hit my head hard, so now I have a 'minor concussion.' The nurses say that it's normal, about my legs, but it isn't. And recording your voice is stupid, too."

He presses stop.

She doesn't take the recorder from him, so he sets the little device on the bedside table and she asks some questions, and he answers, and then she leaves.

Late that night, he grabs the recorder, presses start.

"I wasn't in a crash," he whispers, as if to prove a point.

He shuts it off and stares at the window to his right until he falls asleep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_____________________________________________________

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Day Two."

The doctor, Mr. Hatsuki, is supposed to come check in on him soon.

Meanwhile, the room is empty and a green tray sits on top of his useless legs.

"The food here is terrible. I almost threw up yesterday because they gave me something called 'cottage cheese'. The water here isn't even clean. It feels like an asylum. I still can't move my legs."

He stops the recorder. It's quiet, when he stops talking, and there's nobody in the room to interrogate him. He feels shut off from the rest of the world, in a hospital bed, all alone. He sits back, pushes the tray off of his bed harshly and pretends not to hear his food splatter across the linoleum.

They gave him a patterned blue hospital dress, although they call it a gown. His feet are bare but he wishes they weren't, they poke out from underneath the thin paper they call a blanket. He doesn't want to see his legs at all. They feel more like a weight now, instead of a part of him.

A weight he's afraid will never be fixed.

That's what he is, he muses.

Broken.

****  
  
  


The doctor is nicer than he thought. Tobio tries to find a flaw, tries to single out a reason to hate and be angry, but the Dr. Hatsuki is kind and says he ' _only wants to help you, Kageyama._ ' He lets Tobio complain about the gross hospital food, gives him room to talk, isn't afraid Tobio will hit him too.

Sometimes, he talks, but most of the time he just gives little noises of confirmation. It's better than talking to a recorder, though.

"Am I broken?"

Dr. Hatsuki looks up, through his glasses at the raven-haired boy.

Tobio waits for an answer, sees his legs in the very edge of his vision,  but doesn't glance down.

"Why do you ask?"

Kageyama stays still. He doesn't shrug his shoulders like he wants to, doesn't open his mouth. The doctor stares back, eyes emotionless. Then he takes off his glasses and rubs his forehead tenderly, like he has a headache.

"Do you think you're broken?"

"Yes." Tobio murmurs quickly. "If I'm broken, can you fix me?"

"Your legs?"

Kageyama nods.

There's a few moments where neither of them speak, and it feels like neither of them breathe, either. Dr. Hatsuki seems to hesitate, and though the anger has passed, Tobio sees the flaw. Sympathy.

That's the doctor's weakness.

"Are you sure you want to know the answer to that question?"

Tobio's heart lurches. That's when he looks away, down to his clammy fingers squeezing the fabric of the bedsheets, and whispers a curt **_get out_**. At first he doesn't think his doctor hears him, but he gets up to his feet and picks up his clipboard with him. Or maybe he doesn't hear Kageyama, and instead the quiet began to annoy him.

Tobio doesn't want to know.

Dr. Hatsuki grips the doorknob, turns it, and Tobio looks up quickly to see an unfamiliar hallway. A thrill trickles up his spine. That's the outside. It's the first he's really seen what's behind that big tan door, and he feels his breath pick up. Dr. Hatsuki knows this, too. Just as he's about to leave, he turns around, and peers pointedly at Tobio.

He says something that creeps under the raven's skin and makes his bones freeze.

"Do you remember what happened, Kageyama?"

****  
  


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 _____________________________________________________

****  
  


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"You need to eat, Kageyama."

Day Three, he woke up to no recorder. His nurse informed him that Dr. Hatsuki took it, for something like a test, even though Kageyama was told that the device was a private object. His and his alone-- the only thing that was _his_ right now.

It's Day Four and he still hasn't gotten it back.

They give him cottage cheese again, a stale salami sandwich and a tall plastic cup of nearly spoiled milk. He decides that he hates the food and hates the people. But Dr. Hatsuki is a snake behind that PhD degree and those clean-lensed glasses, only nobody else knows that.

"Kageyama," the nurse commands again. She huffs when he continues to gaze out of the window, ignoring her. He thinks about the birds outside because he can hear them singing, but he doesn't think about the cars and trucks even though he can hear them, too.

A few seconds later and his bedroom door opens. He snaps up and catches a glimpse of the hallway again, mostly obscured by another one of the nurses.

"He won't eat," the first nurse sighs.

"Oh well," the other one says. "We can't make him, but he'll regret it later. We need to get him upstairs now."

Tobio frowns in confusion. The two women grab the bed and push it forward, and in a hurry he grips the bed's rails tight. The bed moves, Kageyama looks down to see wheels, which start screeching as they drive him down the hallway. He has no idea where he's going. He turns around, glances backwards to see the room he'd been in. It looks smaller and smaller the farther he gets away from it, and the ceiling lights are too bright and he suddenly doesn't want to leave the room. He wants to go back.

"Where am I going?," Tobio demands.

The first nurse doesn't seem to listen, but the other is nicer.

"We're taking you upstairs." She tells him. "Dr. Hatsuki decided that you've had enough time alone, and now he wants to put you in direct sunlight."

"What the fuck--"

He sputters when they turn a sharp left. They hurry down the expanse of another hallway, and stop at an elevator. Tobio barely has any time to register the fact that this is the first time he's never been able to walk into an elevator, isn't able to realize that he probably looks pathetic not being able to even run down a hallway.

One of them presses the up arrow, then they wheel him in when the doors part, and then they press another button. They go up, slowly.

There is no dumb elevator music, which Kageyama considers a positive plus.

One of the buttons, it looks like a four, turns a yellow and there's a ding sound and the elevator stops. The doors open again and then he's being wheeled out, into an entirely different place. This room is stranger than his. Bigger, wider, more open. He's driven past other hospital beds with thin blue blanket sheets and patients under them, with the only thing to separate the rooms being railings hanging a light green curtain between each bed. It doesn't look like there's really any privacy, and Kageyama shifts uncomfortably under the gaze of the others.

His bed is stopped at the very end, near the window, where sunlight is coming through. His new bed looks exactly the same as his old one. His own green curtain is pulled back, but the bed next to his is vacant.

"This is the hard part," one of the nurses whispers.

****  
  


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                _____________________________________________________                                     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kageyama remembers.

He remembers what happened, but remembering feels like purposely touching sharp parts of glass. He hasn't picked them up, the broken pieces of glass, isn't ready to yet. It's easier to bury his thoughts in the dirt and turn away than to just get over it.

He remembers, but it hurts to.

He still hits his leg with a balled-up fist to see if maybe, one of these times he'll feel it. But the only thing he feels is exhaustion now.

He remembers the screeching of his car tires, remembers what the paved road looked like up close, remembers the sound his window made when it got smashed into. He remembers hearing himself scream, sounding strangled, he remembers the silence that followed after the damage had been done.

He remembers falling asleep, remembers how his lungs failed out and how he was so shocked he couldn't move.

And now he can't walk right.

****  
  
  


 

 

 

And it's like reliving the memory all over again, when the nurses grab the undersides of his legs and hoist him up out of the bed. The other patients watch, probably wondering why he's so damn helpless, and Tobio grits his teeth and tries to yank himself away. He can walk.

"Kageyama, don't be difficult," the first tells him.

"Just let us get you into the bed," the second says.

No, no no _nono **no** \--_

"I can do it myself!" He yells, hitting the hands that come to reach for him.

His heart's pounding against his ribcage, he feels like a flightless bird.

His legs feel like wooden sticks, wobbly, and he has no control over them. He tries to lift one, biting his tongue hard, frustrated. His fingers clench into fists once more and he knows, he can't do this alone-- there's no possible way. But he tries to.

" _Don't touch me!_ "

"Kageyama!"

He punches the air, almost hitting another nurse. He's angry. He can feel heat coursing through him nine miles a minute, his blood boiling and hydrogen flaring up.

He grabs the shoulders of the nurses and tries to lift those deadweight legs, tries to curl his toes and set it back down again, but it stays firmly planted on the tiled floor. He tries again, again and again, until he's screaming at nothing and he bets all of the others are scared of him, well good, and then maybe somebody called for help, because then he's crashing to the same floor he can't even lift his foot up off, but not because he's falling. Someone's pushing him down and then they're sticking a needle into his arm, holding his wrists back, pushing his face down.

His lungs heave in air until he feels dizzy, and there's a darkness at the edges.

****  
  


                                     

 

 

              

"Day Six," he exhales.

He slept most of Day Five. They didn't give him back his recorder until just this morning, but now it's noon and now he's finally using it. They made him swallow down some more food, and he acted like he couldn't taste it.

"I'm so tired," he begins. "I tried to walk again, but they shot something in me with a needle and now I'm tired. Maybe they don't want me to walk. They want me to stay broken."

He thinks of something else to say.

"They took me a different room. I'm with a bunch of weirdos who haven't taken a bath in 78 years. There's nothing to do here except sleep and play with the puzzles the nurses give us. They let us watch movies, but they have to be movies about love and family and forgiveness. This isn't even a hospital."

He's about to press stop, but adds, "And my doctor is Satan."

****  
  
  
  
  


 

Kageyama doesn't talk to the other patients, or as the nurses call them, neighbors. But he listens to them talk. He has nothing else to do, anyway. One of them is an elderly lady who has a sickness that runs in her family, the one next to her is a cranky man in his mid-30s who apparently lost his wife on a cruise ship. The last, past the empty bed next to Kageyama's, is a little girl with tawny almond eyes and no hair. She's not very talkative, but she smiles, and one time she even tried to give a candy her parents brought her to Tobio, because he 'looked sad'.

"What's wrong with you?," She'd asked, eyes wide and curious.

"My legs," he murmured. "I can't walk anymore."

"Oh. Why not?"

"I don't know. I just woke up one day and they didn't work," he lied, sparing her the truth.

"Oh," she repeats.

Then, she sits up in her hospital bed and hops out, walks over, sits on Kageyama's bed, hands him the candy, and pats one of his legs.

"One day, you'll walk. Or, you'll find something that will make you even happier than walking."

So in exchange for the candy he let her look at his recorder, and she asked some of the other patients some questions and recorded them talking, something like an interview. Then dinner came and she gave it back and everyone ate beef stew and salad and rice and pudding.

Including Kageyama.

****  
  


                                            

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_____________________________________________________                                   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Day Seven, there was a new patient. He was wheeled in and he looked like he was sleeping and all the other patients in the room stared at him quietly. They lifted him out of his original bed and set him in the new one. Kageyama frowned at how strange he looked-- pale skin and bright, messy persimmon hair. He was short and the old lady clapped her hands loud to see if he would wake up, but he didn't, and one of the nurses explained that he was in a slight coma.

"Is he sick?," the little girl asked.

Everyone waited for the answer.

The nurse looked ruffled, surprised, unsure. Then she inhaled and gave a weak smile, and Tobio realized the new patient wasn't sick at all.

"Yes," the nurse said anyway.

  
Then she left before any more questions could be asked. They all looked at the new patient for a while longer, and then things went back to normal. It was like the new person wasn't even there. The TVs were turned back on and the puzzles were brought back out and Tobio turned back to listen to the birds chirp outside the window.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (•̀ᴗ•́)و ̑̑,


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And all at once, Kageyama understood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank u for all of ur comments and kudos!! aa here is another chapter (´∇ﾉ｀*)ノ also i apologize in advance if i spell kageyamas name wrong haha

It's on the first day of the second week at the Hospital that Kageyama realizes he's an expert at pretending. Or, at least he pegs himself to be. Not only were his legs dead, but he still had a few fractured bones (which the nurses had numbed down with some anesthetic.) They said he'd start feeling the pain soon.

And he shouldn't have been surprised when he was flipping through the channels on the tv overhead sometime before the sun rose, because he couldn't fall back asleep, and pain shot up his arm. He found, later, that since the drugs are slowly wearing off, he can barely move his arm without being blinded by a sharp stinging.

They told him he'd have to sit through it-- giving him more of the medicine wouldn't be healthy, and most of the hospital rooms are crowded and the doctors are busy. They don't have any time for him. No time to fix his arm. Tobio supposed he could bear it. He'd have to. What other choice did he have?

Although his childhood was full of plenty of scrapes and bruises, he isn't used to this sort of pain, never had a fractured or broken bone before.

But he swallows down the anxiety and tries to laugh it off.

He wonders, how bad the pain can be.

 

 

 

The patients in Room 4B are given novel books to keep themselves busy, but it's difficult for Kageyama to even turn the pages. His book is boring anyway. It's not as bad as the books the others got, though; Spiritual ones, because good vibes from printed ink on paper are definitely going to keep you from rotting in a fancy hospital.

Kageyama was given a poetry book.

It's full of hard words and stupid analogies and half-finished sketches of strange things to accompany the rhymes. He tries to read his book, but he can't even tell which poems are happy and which are sad. He sets the book down and closes his eyes. The little girl two beds down sits near him, opens his book again and somehow finds a poem about a tiny chicken or duck or something that loses its family, and she reads it aloud while his arm aches.

The other patient, the new one, sleeps still.

He isn't given a book to read, or any food to eat when lunch is wheeled into the room on a cart.

Tobio tries not to look at him or think about him too much, but it's hard not to when they're in beds right next to each other. Especially, because the other's hair is really striking. Kageyama wonders several times whether it's dyed or natural (he puts his money on dyed), as it's a striking orange-red, and in different lights it looks either gold or vermilion. Sometimes, his thoughts edge over to the topic of why the shorty was even in the hospital. He knows it's not from sickness-- the nurses here aren't good at lying. Mainly the one who was in the room the day before.

But no matter how many times he ponders over this, he can never find an answer. It feels odd to have someone in a coma right beside you, oblivious and almost lifeless, but it doesn't feel uncomfortable. Nobody knows the new patient's name and nobody bothers him. Yet, it's clear Kageyama's neighbors and even Kageyama himself, are anxious for him to wake up. The little girl seems to be longing for a new friend.

Half an hour past noon and Room 4B is quiet. The tvs are shut off and the little almond-eyed girl is taking a nap, and the old lady and the widowed man are having a conversation on politics.

Tobio drowns them out.

His recorder sits in the top drawer of his hospital-bedside table, untouched. He doesn't feel any reason to use it, but he reaches down anyway and opens the shelf door and looks down to see if it's still there. His poetry book sits beside it, bookmarked to the tiny duck-chicken story. He touches the cold shininess of it, like a reminder, and slides the shelf back in.

The birds are gone and there's nothing on but blonde talk show hosts. His stomach churns sickly at the thought of what's for dinner.

 

 

 

 

 

 

_________________________________________________________

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tobio drifts in and out of a dream-like state, his vision blurry, the sounds he hears distant. Sometimes half asleep, but mostly half-awake. He thinks about the long narrow hallway again, thinks about the horrible feeling in his lungs he always got when he ran too fast and ended up heaving in air. Then he thought about running. He remembers having scorching cramps in his calves or what it was like to just _feel,_ to run and walk and do things like those that are just natural.

Then he thinks about himself in a wheelchair.

And he can't think straight.

Hot rain makes his eyes burn. He won't look the same and he knows this, denies it, he doesn't want to sit in some stupid contraption-junk thing with wheels, doesn't want to watch everyone else pass him by with a body that's actually _functional._ He turns his head towards the window and uses his bad arm's hand to shove away the tears, ignoring the searing scream of pain that it gives while he does it.

Who will he even be?

He won't even be a person anymore. If he can't even walk, he won't be himself. Helplessness washes over him like a starving tide and he sniffles, while everybody in the room sleeps.

 

 

 

 

The dinner-nurse doesn't come this time. In her place, a tall blonde with glasses and a bored expression enters, serving them all trays with vegetables and steamed fish and some weird salty type of chocolate. He doesn't talk to any of the patients, barely makes eye contact, and Tobio finds himself disliking him immensely.

When the bitter blonde stops at Kageyama's bed, he stares for a second, at the other's legs. The raven's eyes narrow and he snatches his tray from the other's grasp, watching him.

He glares, dares the taller to say something.

The blonde gives him one last dull look before driving the food cart back out of the room and making sure the door is heard when he shuts it. Kageyama gives his steamed fish to the old lady, and stares at nothing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_________________________________________________________

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Tobio," someone whispers into his ear. "Tobio! Wake up!"

He startles awake, out of sorts and confused and maybe a little afraid. The ceiling above is dim and he rubs at his eyes quickly, shaking himself from the post-sleep haze. Like a fish out of water.

He turns to look at the person who had woke him up, and he frowned slightly when it was the little girl. She smiled big, and he looked behind her to see two people, a man and a woman, and it came to him. Her _parents._ They held a bouquet of flowers and a box of candy and they smiled, too, politely at Kageyama. He couldn't bring himself to smile back, not at this hour and not at strangers, but he did wave, with his good arm.

"I'm leaving!," She announced heartily.

"What?" He stopped, felt his heart let up. He supposed that if anyone should leave this miserable infirmary, it should be her. "That's great."

He tried to sound happy.

"I know! I mean, I don't get to _for-real_ leave. They're taking me to another hospital. A bigger one, where the medicine is better and the doctors can help me more."

She gave another toothy smile.

And all at once, Kageyama understood. He glanced back at the little girl's parents, which now looked nervous and afraid, shadows under their eyes and trembling hands. This was all it was, an endless cycle of false hope and the haunting fear. They looked more scared than Tobio has ever seen a person be. The little girl with the almond-shaped eyes and no hair was stuck in a loop, a horrible loop that no one should have to experience. He wonders, how many times has she had to move? They were shipping her to another hospital, another bed, another risk.

Tobio looked down.

"I'm--," his voice cracked, and he swallowed down that lump in his throat. "I'm happy."

He felt empty.

"I have to hurry, or we're gonna be late," she giggled. She took his hand and shook it, giving a curt business goodbye, and when she turned around her parents grinned sorrowful approval. "I'll come back, though. I promise."

He nodded.

She was gone just like that, the bed that was once hers was empty and neat and clean and Kageyama just felt hollow, for no reason at all.

 

 

 

 

A few hours before lunch, and Tobio still felt empty. He refused to move from his bed and Dr. Hatsuki, still a snake, came to Room 4B instead of having Kageyama come to his own like planned. So Tobio had to have his arm checked out in front of two old people and Patient O, as he was now named (his hair was something the patients couldn't ignore), but that didn't really bother him. What bothered him, was how gloomy the hospital room felt without the little girl.

He felt stubborn and knew he was when his doctor asked him to lift up his arm and he didn't. He didn't budge. He stayed stiff and still, with slumped shoulders and something that felt gross in his heart.

"Kageyama," Dr. Hatsuki calls again, grabbing the other's arm and holding it up coldly. One of the nurses who had taken him upstairs was behind the doctor, holding two different kinds of tape-things, one white and one green.

There wasn’t even a point in doing this, he mused. All of them, the patients, are broken anyway.

"Kageyama, you can't be fixed if you don't listen to me, " his doctor continues. He was using Kageyama's problem as an excuse, to make him listen. The grip on his arm strengthens and Tobio hunches his shoulders in further, fingers quivering, gradually becoming fists. He didn’t want to listen.

"Don't," he whispers, the first word he's said since the morning.

Dr. Hatsuki's grasp on his wrist is almost bruising, enough the make the pain begin again, but nobody tells him to stop so Kageyama doesn't complain. His breathing is labored and he wants something to eat. They hold his arm in place for a good angle, tape it up, and then prod and squeeze it a few times to make sure everything is alright.

Kageyama finally looks up as they leave, the gentle click of their shoes against the floor the only noise. Neither of them spare him a glance, and he feels weak. He feels like sleeping.

He is ready to, but the tall bored blonde comes in with lunch for the second time, right on schedule. Kageyama eats and it's like nothing has changed at all. Blonde talk show hosts are still doing interviews and the birds still sing, but things feel all strange and mixed up. His eyelids droop and he doesn't fight how tired he is, he yawns into his good, free arm's palm, the one without a new cast, and rolls over onto his side. Away from the window, because he's too tired for sunlight and happy birds now.

The body in the bed next to his stirs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_________________________________________________________

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kageyama has never been all that close to his family.

When his father died, a few days after he was born, his mother was left alone to raise her only child. Then she remarried a moderately wealthy man who's line between possessive and loving was very thin, and Tobio gained three other siblings, all of which were planning on studying in another country. But his stepfather didn't ever seem like a dad and his step siblings never seemed like siblings. He felt like a ghost, and he couldn't have been more relieved when his mother finally realized that those long nights of yelling and all those punches she took weren't indications of love.

They got the hell out, and Kageyama moved away, and his mother was left all alone again. And now he's in some mental institute, only now knowing what it feels like to be completely alone.

He wishes he had some family to visit him. And he feels like a ghost now. Everyone here is a stranger, and he’s like a lost cause. He wonders how long it'll be until he stops feeling things altogether.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_________________________________________________________

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Day 10," Kageyama mumbles.

His cast is a bright green that makes his eyes hurt. Why couldn’t they just pick blue? There's a cup of cold water on the bedside table and he's decided to start talking again. Breakfast has been delivered and Tobio's just grateful he wasn't awake to see the stupid blonde bring it in-- he doesn't think he can look at him once without channeling all his frustration into a punch. Of course, he won't be able to stand up and walk over, but maybe he can convince Glasses that there's something in his drink next time and he'll come close enough that Tobio might have a good chance at knocking him out.

But then, he'd be even lonelier in jail.

"I'm allowed to wear real clothes now. They took away the dumb hospital dress and my doctor is on vacation for a little while, which is good. There's nothing to do here anymore. I heard that one of the patients tried to escape by setting a room on fire, but the nurse that checks the blood sugar of the old lady in here said that didn't happen," he states. "They don't let us listen to music. I have to wear a cast now and I guess I got signed up for therapy sessions, but they can't make me go."

Something in the corners of his vision moves, but he brushes the notion off.

"I don't know when I'll be getting out of here. They tell me Dr. Hatsuki has all the information, but I'm sure all of the nurses are spies who want to steal all our credit cards. I don't know."

He clicks stop.

He places the recorder back inside the drawer and falls back against his bed, sighs when his head hits the soft pillow. He has one of the said therapy sessions today, but he figures that he can't go if he isn't even able to be woken up. His eyes close and his breath falters and he hums drowsily. Then he hears something.

He blinks open an eye and watches, startled, as Patient O sits up, slowly, uncertain. Kageyama holds his breath.

The redhead cautiously picks the paper-blanket up off himself, peers around in borderline confusion. His hands shake just a little, as if he doesn't know what to do with them, and Kageyama squints at, cautious. Then it's as if the shorty has remembered something, because next Tobio is as still as a fly, watching as the shorty's legs are pulled up to his chest and he rests his head on top of his knees. He stops moving, quiet.

 

 


End file.
